diners and waiters surged for the exit, and fell over each other, and with awful inevitability they all blocked the doors.
I seized a bottle, poured wine into a napkin, and held it to my face. I don’t know that this was much of a substitute for a gas-mask, and I would not care to repeat the experiment, but I guess it was better than nothing, because I stayed standing while others fell. No matter how I tried I could not help them to their feet again.
I do not recall that I decided to run, but I just found my feet carrying me to the door, and best not to think about what I was stepping on, the swan’s glass wing shattering underfoot, a woman’s necklace, a man’s outstretched hand, I don’t know what else. I held some woman by the arm as I fled through the kitchens and out into the street where a crowd was waiting, and a cheer went up as she and I tumbled together on the cobblestones. She later turned out to be the President of the Six Thousand Club. I am glad that she survived but I am sorry to report that statistics compiled by the Line’s surveyors tell us that Melville has not yet got above Five.*
I breathed deeply, stood, and started back in again, but then someone grabbed me and wrestled me to the ground. I lay on my back and blinked. My sight is very bad in my left eye at the best of times, though you would not know it to look at me. The other eye was so aggravated by the gas that at first I could hardly make out the face of my trusty assistant, Mr. Carver. He looked concerned for my health and safety, as well he might, because I had not paid him in weeks.
A crowd of Melville’s citizens stood all around us. A man in a heather green suit and a kind of raffish collar with a gold pin on it crouched beside Carver. He put a hand on my knee and said, “It’s hopeless, son. No sense throwing your life away, you can’t save them, nobody can now.” It later turned out he was a reporter for the Melville Booster. Light-headed as I was from the wine and the gas I didn’t at first understand what he meant and nearly said, “Save who?” The honest truth is that I had been thinking of running back in for the napkin, which held diagrams of the Ransom Process, and Fortune forbid if it were to fall into the wrong hands. I said nothing. Instead I passed out.
----
*Nor would it until well past the turn of the century, and long after Mr. Ransom had departed for parts unknown. —EMC
My pluck and daring were much admired. A sketch-artist captured my likeness for the Booster . He was kind enough to strengthen my chin and flatten my ears. By the end of the day I could have had investors lining up around the corner. But it didn’t feel right. Carver packed up the wagon and we left town that afternoon.
This was not my story of heroism. It was just one of the things that happened that year. I don’t know why I thought to tell it now.
Adversity breeds ingenuity, that’s what they say. It was a great year for ideas and notions and inventions and grand world-changing schemes. In our various travels and escapes me and Mr. Carver met gentlemen and sometimes ladies who were trying to sell sewing machines, and electrical door buzzers, and a method of hypnotism using magnets, and procedures for rain-making and cloud-seeding and the increase of crops. And of course not least of these grand ideas was the Ransom Process, also known as the Ransom Infinite-Escalation or the Ransom Unmoved-Mover Process, or the Ransom Free-Energy Process, or the Ransom Light-Bringing Engine, or a number of other things from time to time and on various patent applications and sideshow advertisements. Mr. Carver and me, we went from town to town all along the edge of the world, displaying the prototypes, seeking investors. We had what you might call a run of bad luck but remained always hopeful. Or at least I was hopeful, I can’t speak for Mr. Carver.
We traveled alongside inventors of procedures for extracting gold from lead, silver, and scat—
I seized a bottle, poured wine into a napkin, and held it to my face. I don’t know that this was much of a substitute for a gas-mask, and I would not care to repeat the experiment, but I guess it was better than nothing, because I stayed standing while others fell. No matter how I tried I could not help them to their feet again.
I do not recall that I decided to run, but I just found my feet carrying me to the door, and best not to think about what I was stepping on, the swan’s glass wing shattering underfoot, a woman’s necklace, a man’s outstretched hand, I don’t know what else. I held some woman by the arm as I fled through the kitchens and out into the street where a crowd was waiting, and a cheer went up as she and I tumbled together on the cobblestones. She later turned out to be the President of the Six Thousand Club. I am glad that she survived but I am sorry to report that statistics compiled by the Line’s surveyors tell us that Melville has not yet got above Five.*
I breathed deeply, stood, and started back in again, but then someone grabbed me and wrestled me to the ground. I lay on my back and blinked. My sight is very bad in my left eye at the best of times, though you would not know it to look at me. The other eye was so aggravated by the gas that at first I could hardly make out the face of my trusty assistant, Mr. Carver. He looked concerned for my health and safety, as well he might, because I had not paid him in weeks.
A crowd of Melville’s citizens stood all around us. A man in a heather green suit and a kind of raffish collar with a gold pin on it crouched beside Carver. He put a hand on my knee and said, “It’s hopeless, son. No sense throwing your life away, you can’t save them, nobody can now.” It later turned out he was a reporter for the Melville Booster. Light-headed as I was from the wine and the gas I didn’t at first understand what he meant and nearly said, “Save who?” The honest truth is that I had been thinking of running back in for the napkin, which held diagrams of the Ransom Process, and Fortune forbid if it were to fall into the wrong hands. I said nothing. Instead I passed out.
----
*Nor would it until well past the turn of the century, and long after Mr. Ransom had departed for parts unknown. —EMC
My pluck and daring were much admired. A sketch-artist captured my likeness for the Booster . He was kind enough to strengthen my chin and flatten my ears. By the end of the day I could have had investors lining up around the corner. But it didn’t feel right. Carver packed up the wagon and we left town that afternoon.
This was not my story of heroism. It was just one of the things that happened that year. I don’t know why I thought to tell it now.
Adversity breeds ingenuity, that’s what they say. It was a great year for ideas and notions and inventions and grand world-changing schemes. In our various travels and escapes me and Mr. Carver met gentlemen and sometimes ladies who were trying to sell sewing machines, and electrical door buzzers, and a method of hypnotism using magnets, and procedures for rain-making and cloud-seeding and the increase of crops. And of course not least of these grand ideas was the Ransom Process, also known as the Ransom Infinite-Escalation or the Ransom Unmoved-Mover Process, or the Ransom Free-Energy Process, or the Ransom Light-Bringing Engine, or a number of other things from time to time and on various patent applications and sideshow advertisements. Mr. Carver and me, we went from town to town all along the edge of the world, displaying the prototypes, seeking investors. We had what you might call a run of bad luck but remained always hopeful. Or at least I was hopeful, I can’t speak for Mr. Carver.
We traveled alongside inventors of procedures for extracting gold from lead, silver, and scat—
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